Given the subject of the workshop, most of the panelists focused their comments on the current political scene and the current U.S. administration’s apparent disdain for climate science. I took a broader, somewhat historical view, and as the only economist on the panel, I commented on the relationship of economic research to policy making. I did this via reflections on experiences I’ve had over the past three decades. I tried to make three points: first, economic research results can be used as a light bulb or a rock, and either can be effective; second, it is important to move quickly when windows of opportunity open in the policy world to implement research ideas; and third, politics matter, and should not be ignored.

Research Results Can be Used as a Light Bulb or a Rock

I cannot speak for the natural sciences, but it is clearly the case that economic evidence can be used either as a “light bulb” – to illuminate an issue and possibly persuade policy makers of the wisdom of a particular course of action – or as a “rock,” that is, as ammunition to support a policy maker’s predisposed position. Is this cynical? I think not, because such economic ammunition can help win a policy battle. I was just reminded by Paul Krugman in his New York Times column of a somewhat less charitable metaphor, where he characterized some politicians as using economists “the way a drunkard uses a lamppost: for support, not illumination.”

The other example I mentioned to highlight the importance of moving quickly when windows of opportunity open in the policy world is associated with the negotiations carried out annually under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). At the seventeenth Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC in Durban, South Africa, in 2011, the delegates agreed to the “Durban Platform for Enhanced Action,” which broke with nearly twenty years of UNFCCC policy by mandating a new approach in which all countries, not just the richest nations, would participate in addressing the need for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions. The key challenge for climate negotiators was how to meet this new mandate while still observing the fundamental UNFCCC principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities,” which had previously been interpreted to mean that rich countries alone would shoulder the burden of reducing emissions.

At the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, we recognized that negotiators around the world were suddenly open to outside-the-box thinking. Indeed, in Science magazine, my colleague, Joe Aldy, and I wrote an article, “Climate Negotiators Create an Opportunity for Scholars.” Over the following months (and years) we worked hard to help key negotiating countries develop a new policy architecture that could meet the challenge before them. The result was a hybrid approach that combined elements of top-down architecture with a healthy dose of bottom-up “pledge-and-review,” which led eventually, of course, to the Paris Agreement of 2015.

Politics Matter

For the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), I served as Coordinating Lead Author (with Dr. Zou Ji of China) of the chapter on “International Cooperation: Agreements and Instruments.” I was surprised to find that the process was highly politicized – in two distinct ways. First, whereas I had assumed that the Lead Authors (LAs) serving on our writing team were there only to represent their respective scientific expertise (in economics, legal scholarship, international relations, etc.), some of the LAs seemed to represent the interests of their respective countries.

Fortunately, I learned from that experience and my attitude (and behavior) was quite different just six months later, when I found myself in Copenhagen for what was essentially the final stage of the entire five-year enterprise of research, writing, and government approval of the various reports of IPCC AR5, namely the government approval sessions for the Synthesis Report (SYR), which summarizes and synthesizes the key findings from all three Working Group reports. I had learned my lesson. Rather than disdaining the politics of the occasion, I embraced it and spent the week in Copenhagen in careful negotiations with the key national governments, the result of which was that all of the essential text on international cooperation and agreements was preserved in the Synthesis Report.

Ironically, by recognizing, accepting, and indeed participating in the fundamentally political aspects of the IPCC government approval process, I was able to keep the report of research from itself being politicized.

Summing Up

So, the three points I made regarding the relationship between economic research and policy making at last week’s Harvard workshop were these: first, economic research results can be used as a light bulb or a rock, and either or both can be effective; second, it is important to move quickly when windows of opportunity open in the policy world to implement research ideas; and third, politics matter, and should not be ignored.

I left it to others at the workshop – and I leave it to readers of this essay – to judge whether any of this applies more broadly to “Climate Science in a Time of Political Disruption.”